Cameras and other image recording devices often use one or more image sensors, such as a charged-coupled device (CCD) sensor or a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor. A typical CMOS image sensor may include a two-dimensional array of pixels, where each pixel may include a photo detector, such as a photodiode, and one or more transistors to activate each pixel. An image sensor may be implemented in a rolling shutter configuration or a global shutter configuration.
In a rolling shutter, each of the pixels within the image sensor capture light row by row, and the captured light is then read out to a processor row by row. In this configuration, there may be a time delay between when the first pixel row captures light from the scene and when the last pixel row captures light from the scene. Accordingly, if there is movement in the scene between the first and last pixel rows, the movement may be captured as blurred lines or other motion artifacts. In a global shutter, each of the pixels capture light at the same time (i.e., has the same integration period) and then the pixels transfer the light to a storage component until the pixels can be read out by a processor. In a global shutter configuration, motion is captured and reproduced in an image better than a rolling shutter, as each of the pixels capture light at the exact same time. However, in this configuration, the image sensor generally must include storage space for each pixel, which may require a reduction in resolution or an increase in size for the image sensor.
For example, the resolution of an image sensor typically depends on the number of pixels, that the higher the number of pixels, the higher the resolution of the image sensor. However, as the resolution increases, often the size of the image sensor die also increases. The increase in size is especially true of image sensors in a global shutter configuration, where each pixel includes a light capturing element (e.g., photodiode) and a storage component. Accordingly, image shutters incorporating a global shutter implementation generally have lower resolution than a rolling shutter image sensor of the same size.
Additionally, many image sensors may sacrifice an increased resolution to have a smaller size. For example, many portable electronic devices, such as cell phones, tablet computers, and the like, may include a camera, but the image sensor of the camera may be designed to be as small as possible. Therefore, many cameras for portable devices may have image sensors with decreased resolutions so that they may be as small as possible.